


e is for elijah

by Hope



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF, Sandman, The Endless, lotrips
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-06
Updated: 2003-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>originally posted <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/angstslashhope/375390.html">here</a>.</p><p>answers from the "ask one of my characters a question" meme.</p><p>2. e is for elijah elijah<br/>question from monkeycrackmary: <i>do you have any ambitions that you haven't achieved yet?</i></p>
          </blockquote>





	1. e is for elijah

e is for elijah who hasn't been back in l.a. for long, really, maybe a week and who's had almost enough time to get back into the swing of the kinda oily orange time zone and is still running (on empty) on a kind of delirium that's kinda scraped down his throat raw and his limbs shaky like after a tantrum or sobbing or something but you know. on the kind of high you're in in dreams where you _know_ there's no way you can fly, really, but you're still floating up here somewhere above the ground floating up like buoyed with a kind of euphoria and a kind of _oh fuck, what am i doing..._

e is for elijah who's only been back in l.a. for about a week and has gotten back into the swing of things; sleeping through most of the day and waking up at around 4pm and lounging around the house flicking through cable tv and avoiding the windows until the city's the colour of a blood blister and he sort of half watches it out the corner of his eye until it starts to go more the colour of rotten fruit and the sugar-bitter street lights come on orange and insect-stained white and he stands under the shower with his head down and the water pressure stinging the back of his neck and his back and the water smelling like chemicals and tasting like chemicals.

e is for elijah who's not used to the acrid thick exhaust fumes hooking claws into the back of his nostrils as he steps out of the door and sees the neighbourhood not green but a surreal orange with black above if he looks up above the lights looming over and cupping dirty light onto the street and the car headlights look out of place, incongruous where the sticky asphalt is already lit and his shadows move and fragment, layers of them moving like the hands of a clock and too faint as he jogs down the path and out the gate and has to stop to light a cigarette and his eyes strain to keep focussed on the flame in his cupped hands before he pulls the car door open and climbs into the back seat.

e is for elijah driving or being driven through a not-green l.a. being driven because he's not yet used to driving back on the right (proper) side of the road yet, heh heh heh, with american accents that are familiar like the smell of sweat on clothes he's already worn angling in at him bouncing of the vinyl surfaces in the second hand car that sits low on the ground with four people crowding in the back seat that smell like cologne and perfume and polyester or vinyl or something or the cheap metal of someone's jangling set of bangles and laughing at the little remnants of new zealand (britain?) in his own sentences ("oh, absolutely") but good natured-like, and it's alright being surrounded by these soundsmellstouches that he's not used to because it's better than sitting at home in his yard that's dominated by the low squat of his bungalow not being touched by anything and hearingsmelling only the taste of thick powdery sunlight baking the city.

e is for elijah who doesn't mind clubbing as much as he always complains he does, really, and he's only been back in l.a. for about a week now and it's kinda good to have the sound bury him, pack around him heavily, grittily like the sound of creaking insects burrowing through earth and he's getting kinda back into the swing of cigarette-burned plastic and vinyl and litter instead of beer-sticky polished wood bars and chairs and booths and clean colours and the smell of rain and crushed grass at night and wet metal of parked cars and weird-looking fountains and empty streets and voices he can hear over the off-key earnestness of cover bands.

e is for elijah who isn't a child star, not anymore, those birthdays lost in the sand (not snow) somewhere in new zealand's januaries and he's not some high-risk deadbeat childstar anymore ready to drown in obscurity and addiction and e is for elijah with the nervousexcitement twist in his stomach and the awful bitter smell of urine mixing with it to make him feel a little ill and the boy (man, friend) opposite him in the tiny cubicle with a shirt not quite as flamboyant as orlando's and his hand held out, open, palm up, over the stained porcelain of the toilet bowl.

e is for elijah who isn't a child star anymore ready to drown in addiction but he knows there's uncharted waters and there are some waters he knows too well he thinks (and oh, a heart, fake red and smudged a little on the little white disc, how appropriate - he's always been a romantic after all) waters spanning half the globe and he's never drowned but he's not sure how to swim anymore and the music is a kinda muffled crunch outside so he puts the heart under his tongue and swallows and grins and swallows down the surge of _oh fuck, what am I doing..._

e is for elijah.

e is for elijah and the club spinning around him as he spins and his jaw clenched tight with his tongue locked inside his mouth and festering and tasting like rotten metal and the back of his throat tightening and his stomach is staying still but the rest of the world and him are _spinning_, god, and when he looks down he can see his heart pounding and all red and glowy and shit only not like glowing through his skin but like his skin just isn't there anymore, only the red glowiness of his heart pounding and pumping through sleek white ribs. e is for elijah whose throat is dry and collapsing in on itself like all the air is being sucked out of his mouth his nose and god he's not even dancing anymore he's just floating on up here somewhere above the dancefloor, above the fucking club, even and fucking _yes_, who needs to know how to swim when you can fucking fly?

e is for elijah laughing and hearing every buzz and beat and wail of the music and seeing every strand of the sweat-slicked hair sticking to the bare neck of the girl in front of him and the glimmer glitter on faces and bodies and his heart has melted and is filling every corner of his body and trickling into his fingertips and out of his fingertips and he has skin now and it's glowing, glowing like crazy he's like a huge fucking torch here in the club and his heart's escaping and making the air glow too and he can't breathe very well anymore because his heart's pushing out all the oxygen and filling everything else up and the music slows down only it doesn't slow down everyone else slows down and they're all dancing to the echoey thump thump thump of his heart and the tinny snarecymbal crashing of the music is muffled and dulled and _god_ he can't breathe and he's drowning

e is for elijah struggling out of the crushing waves of dancers with sharp elbows and fingers and hips and heaving himself outside to tremble against the peeling bill posters outside and the cold air is pouring in his mouth and freezing the sides of his throat, his lungs, the hole where his heart used to be and through the little paths it took to leave him and he can't see any stars just the dirty orange city reflecting on the low cloud only he's not sure where he is, in all this, and closing his eyes doesn't really make it any better and he thinks his fingers might be bleeding from where he's scrabbling against the rough concrete surface wall to hold on so he doesn't fall off only when he looks at his hands his blood is dirty orange as well like l.a. has flooded in to replace his glowy heart and _fuck, fuck_ he has to get out of here.

e is for elijah and elijah is lost, a curb rising up to grab hold of a foot heavy from running and his knees slam into the orange-tinged sidewalk then sucks them in and he panics and struggles and then there's an orange taste in his mouth like rust and nervous metal and his vision flashes white for a moment and something's loose in his mouth, something slick enamel his teeth are trying to escape too and something inside his skull hammering out, chipping out, chewing out with sharp pointed teeth of its own, gnawing away at his skull and peeling away chunks of it to get out.

e is for elijah watching the blurred layers of his shadow from somewhere close to the ground, tiny fragments of the sidewalk wrigglingrinding their way into the skin on his chin, his cheek, and his shadows shift and move around like the hands of a clock and he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and feels like he's being borne up again and clings to the pavement desperately and opens his eyes again and sees white, white feet with toes curled like wilted petals and and an old dark army coat dropping down into his field of vision and bright colours, red yellow (orange) blue purple _green_ and black webbed and torn over white skin and the colour's spinning with the world now and painting loud streaks around and around him and the sidewalk is going all soft and she grins and squints her eyes (blue green blue green blue) and says "helloooo!"

e is for elijah who grips her hand and turns it all orange with his touch and his hand is kind of rubbing off on her like it's slippery melting made out of something not-him and she goes "whoop!" and grips onto his wrist with her other hand and leaves a dull grey lead bracelet with little bells and fishes like the chains around her neck and down her chest and hauls him to his feet and its like she's the only one spinning now but the light coming from the street lights is kinda solid and kinda shifting around a bit out of the corner of his eye and when he turns his head to look at them the whole world turns with it and only she moves and she says "all my sisters are looking for you. but i found you first!" and grips his hand and he looks down to see tiny purple spiders crawl out from under her fingernails and start to weave a webbing over his hand, wrist, forearm like the broken black webbing over hers and she smiles and a tiny spider egg sack under her arm bursts and tiny foil fish flutter out of it and gasp on the pavement as she shrugs. "you can come home with me now."


	2. ficlet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> originally posted [here](http://www.livejournal.com/users/angstslashhope/375390.html).
> 
> answers from the "ask one of my characters a question" meme.
> 
> 2\. e is for elijah elijah  
> question from monkeycrackmary: _do you have any ambitions that you haven't achieved yet?_

see it's kinda weird see because i like to think that i kinda don't have any ambitions because that way you can't be disappointed see but then that doesn't make sense because you do kinda have to have ambitions sometimes because then where would you be? where would you go? you'd kind of have nothing, you know, ambition is kind of like hope, something you hope for, and that's kind of something you need to live. But then everything has happened so fast, the past twenty one years of my life like my two-second goldfish memory and i can't remember having any ambitions because i can't remember having time to stop and make ambitions but i've always wanted to make sure my mom was ok, and hannah and zach can take care of himself and he always has you know and all that only i'd have to get somewhere here but i can't help thinking that i just have tried not to think about it too much try not to think about it too much try not to think about it too much and i try not to think about ambitions too much because now it feels like my ambitions are déjà vu kind of like something in my head like a photo or a film, hah, something that's already happened and i'm kind of not sure now where to go and these memory things that are like my future only not because they've already happened but i try not to think about it too much think about it too much there's nothing to look forward to really because i know it all know them all they're kind of like a home for me but i try not to think about it too much because the more i do the less i'm welcome there and this is my home now this is my home now too much. i try not to think about it too much i haven't achieved that yet maybe that then maybe that. keep going the way i am, i'm still alive, aren't i


End file.
